“I refuse to be a victim”

The first time it happened, Callen Harty was 9 or 10 years old. He told his mother about it, how his older brother had touched him “down there.” Her reply: “Oh, you shouldn’t let him do that to you.”

Her response, shifting blame on him, was shaming. He never told her again, and the abuse, including anal rape, continued until he was 17 and his brother was 23, married and with children of his own. For years, Harty never told anyone. And when he did, it was that something happened, not exactly what.

Harty’s secret ate away at him. His shame and self-loathing led him to alcoholism. Even after he came out as a gay man in his early 20s and got sober in his mid-30s, the pain did not go away. Perhaps it never will.

But Harty, now 58, has in recent years found liberation from his need to keep secrets. Now he is committed to telling what happened. Exactly.

In 2010, as he neared the end of a five-year run as artistic director of Madison’s Broom Street Theater, Harty wrote Invisible Boy, a play about childhood sexual abuse based on his own experiences as a child in southwestern Wisconsin. It was one of 23 full-length plays he’s had produced, mostly at Broom Street.

His courage was liberating to others. About half of the two dozen cast and crew members of Invisible Boy revealed that they, too, were molested as children. Audience members broke down in tears and shared their own stories at talkbacks.

Harty, one of the co-founders of the Ten Percent Society, a UW-Madison LGBT student group, was drawn to the cause. He helped organize an all-day Paths to Healing Conference, which has been held in Madison each year since 2013. He developed presentations, including “Healing Through Creative Expression,” which he’s given to audiences across the country. As Harty wrote a few years ago in an online article for The Progressive, “I am not a trained professional in the field of child abuse, but I am an expert.”

Now Harty is the author of a brave new book, Empty Playground: A Survivor’s Story, which documents the abuse he endured and the still-ongoing journey it launched. The self-published book was released in November. Sales have averaged a little more than one copy per day. “It’s going to take quite a few years to be a million-seller,” he jokes.

But still he is gratified, believing the book will spur others to confront their own abuse. “I can’t begin to tell you how many people have come out to me as the first person they’ve told that they were abused as children,” he says.

Written simply and with shattering honesty, Empty Playground is a compelling read, and surprisingly uplifting. It builds to a necessary confrontation with his brother that took place just days before the book was published. (He recorded the encounter that same day on his blog, “A Single Bluebird.”) But even before then, Harty had achieved, through years of hard work, a kind of peace with his past.

“I refuse to be a victim,” he writes early on. “I am a survivor. And I want all victims to become survivors. I also want there to be no more victims.”

That will take some doing. Harty cites statistics showing that one in every four girls and one in every six boys are sexually abused as children. Harty calls this category “a brotherhood and sisterhood that no one wants to belong to but which has an uncountable number of members.”

His prescription is to bring the topic into the light. “We need to have real conversations about the issue of child sexual abuse,” Harty writes. “Only when we face it squarely can we even begin to dream of ever ending it.” Abuse, he says, “thrives in silence and the lack of consequences.”

Harty calls on state lawmakers to pass the Wisconsin Child Victims Act, which would remove the statute of limitations for bringing civil suits over child sexual assault, as other states have done. A bill to accomplish this was introduced in September; past incarnations have drawn opposition from the Wisconsin Catholic Conference and died in committee.

And Harty wants Wisconsin to adopt Erin’s law, which would require schools to teach students to report anyone who tries touching their private parts. A bill to this effect was introduced in the Wisconsin Legislature early this month; similar laws are already on the books in 26 states.

After all these years, Harty says he’s not interested in suing his brother or having him criminally prosecuted. But he believes “some people need to do that to move on with their healing.” He has forgiven his brother, who he hopes will someday apologize and “forgive himself.” As he writes in his book, “I know there is goodness in him, too.”

In the meantime, the release of Empty Playground continues the journey that began for Harty when he was just a little boy. “I’m hoping it gets into the hands of the people who need it,” he says. “I’m hoping other abuse survivors like me don’t have to get into their 50s and 60s to come to terms with it and get past it.”

Callen Harty’s book, Empty Playground, is available locally at A Room of One’s Own Bookstore or through Amazon.